If you ask Jordan in an interview and not where he ranks, he'll say top 10 guard of all time, because he's always talking about not being disrespectful to other all time great guards. And remember, he wasn't talking about just shooting guards.

I'm a huge Jordan fan and hate Kobe, but that was definitely a slight. And from what I remember, he didn't even say Kobe was a top 10 guard of all-time. I think he said Kobe is "probably" a top 10 guard of all-time.

From the point of view that the media takes, I would assume that they would make a case for at least arguably Jordan, Magic, West, and Oscar. Then maybe just to be nice, he'd consider some of the lesser guards like Isiah, Cousy, etc. So maybe him saying top 10 instead of top 5 is explainable and not just him being a dick about it. But the fact that he couldn't even emphatically say he's top 10 comes across clearly as a slight.

He's never admitted it, but I guarantee that Jordan cringes whenever people compare Kobe's ring count to Jordan's since 3 of them came with Shaq and since Kobe's playoff performances don't really compare. He probably says to himself that if he had had Shaq for 8 years he probably would've broken Russell's record